Home Energy Conservation Government Grants – ecoENERGY Revisited – 7

Editor’s Note: Over the holidays we are re-publishing selected articles related to our ecoENERGY energy conservation experiences. Some of the grant amounts may have changed. To access the more than 20 articles we have written on our energy conservation experiences through the ecoENERGY Residential Retrofit program, simply use this link to access ourecoENERGY Energy Conservationpage.

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OK, we have reviewed most of the specific grant related recommendations contained within our Energy Efficiency Evaluation Report from the energy audit we had completed on our home as part of the ecoENERGY Grant program. Hopefully you have seen a few which you can add to your own home renovation tips, home maintenance tips and money saving tips collect to use in the near future.

But, we are just getting started. There is much more to examine in the report. (Have we said we really like the report we received from the firm we employed? )

The next section, on page 2, of the report is a listing of many different energy savings tips. These are not related directly to a specific monetary incentive under the ecoENERGY Grant program, but will conserve energy and thus also save us money by reduced energy usage.

Now, to be fair, this section seems to be boiler plate text; meaning that it is not specific to our situation but is standard text that the evaluation firm uses on all of its reports (again, supposition on our part). Some of the tips are not relevant to us.

For example, it mentions about using setting the heating temperature to 20 degrees Celsius when we are at home and 17 degrees at night and when we are away. We already do this, but it is a nice reminder. It also said to use a timer on our pool pump……..we don’t have a swimming pool. And, there are other examples, but we would rather focus on the tips that were useful to us, and that we think will also be useful to you.

Excellent idea. I am forever forgetting to return to the bathroom to turn off the exhaust fan in the morning after a shower or in the ‘potty’ room after its use.

We liked this electrical energy conservation suggestion so much that we have installed mechanical (not electric which consume electricity when the fan is not running) timers for the fans in our bathrooms. We wrote about the type we selected and installed (yes, with pictures) which you can quickly access through this link to our bathroom fan timer installation articles.

Again, excellent! I work at home much of the time and have the computer, printer, etc. all hooked up to the same power bar. Even when these are off, they still use energy. Our energy auditor, Bruce, had me go to the power bar in the family room and apply this little gadget to the power bar where we connect our TV, Receiver, and so on. Wow, they still draw electricity when off. So, we’ll implement this idea there as well.

Next week we will continue our series of reviewing our Energy Efficiency Evaluation Report we received by looking at a few more of these tips as they are intriging as well as provide some colourful charts that were also in the report.